pfSense vs. UniFi WiFi Access Points

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

I love the equipment for small-scale commercial solutions and quality without the price tag. I might not recommend their products for a large organization with multiple locations and servers. However, the GUI interface will allow remote access and setup across the network. I think this is a great solution for small businesses and families or home office solutions, provided there is some IT knowledge for setup and maintenance.

Incentivized

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• Ubiquti WLAN is very easy on setup for fast deployment.
• The monitoring software is offered at different level. Cloudkey, or just throwing up their free controller on a PC somewhere.
• It also does a great job of publishing timely updates to firmware, and addressing bug issues.
• The ease of the interface, without adding a bunch of fluff, makes this literally the best out there in my opinion.

Incentivized

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

• Initial configuration of access points can be rather tricky. Each one I have installed was a complete pain to get setup and connected with the UniFi Controller software. I never worked out what causes me problems, but thankfully once I've stumbled through the correct procedure, it does work completely reliably after that, for years on end.
• The UniFi Controller software will nag you to share usage data. When offered to opt-in, I choose not to do so, but you'll eventually be nagged again on a future login.
• Some of the 'tooltips' within the Controller software could be more informative.

Incentivized

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

Ubiquiti makes great Access points at various tiers provided far better coverage and throughput than consumer-grade wireless repeaters and routers. We have not had any performance complaints from guests or from the administration who use the wifi on a daily basis.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

Ubiquiti support is minimal, which is said to help decrease the cost of the equipment. However, with many reports of emails going directly to the Ubiquiti support line taking days to hear a response, you're better off either engaging with the community forums for help from fellow UniFi users or reaching out to a reseller that has training on the equipment that can assist.

Incentivized

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

Ubiquiti is overall easier to work with. There is no special training needed to accomplish many of the things required with a Cisco product. Since my time is stretched thin, I need something that I can manage without being weighed down by command-line communications. Also, I am able to use my wireless devices to maintain every Ubiquiti device on my network.

Incentivized

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized

• Can't say it enough, prices are awesome, so ROI is very high IMHO.
• Remote cloud management allows me to service more clients at greater distances.
• Project estimates become much more attractive when you can show the savings vs more expensive solutions.

Incentivized